John Thomas Grant (December 13, 1813 – January 18, 1887) was an American railroad man.
He was born and raised on a farm near Athens, Georgia and graduated from the University of Georgia in 1833 with a degree in Forestry.
With his brother James and the unrelated Lemuel Grant he founded an engineering firm which constructed railroads in Georgia, Alabama, Tennessee, Mississippi, Louisiana and Texas, during which time he amassed a large fortune and enormous tracts of land.
The calamity of the American Civil War largely destroyed his prospects. Although, at the time of his death some 20 years later, he still possessed 60,000 acres (240 km²) in Texas.
He lies in the Grant mausoleum in Oakland Cemetery.
Famous quotes containing the words john and/or grant:
“Well, I know you haven’t had much experience writing and none at all in pictures. But I’ve heard about you. It all sounded like you’re just the man I wanted for a story about the Navy. I don’t want a story just about ships and planes. I want a story about the officers.... I want this story from a pen dipped in salt water not dry martinis. Do you know what I mean?”
—Frank Fenton, William Wister Haines, co-scenarist, and John Ford. John Dodge (Ward Bond)
“America had no use for Adams because he was eighteenth-century, and yet it worshipped Grant because he was archaic and should have lived in a cave and worn skins.”
—Henry Brooks Adams (1838–1918)